Real Property
Real Property
Real Property questions test estates, future interests, concurrent ownership, landlord-tenant law, servitudes, adverse possession, recording, and mortgages. Draw the estate and locate the recording act before applying rules.
Estates and future interests
- Fee simple absolute, life estate, fee tail, and defeasible fees (fee simple determinable, fee simple subject to condition subsequent, fee simple subject to executory limitation).
- Remainders, reversions, and executory interests. The Rule Against Perpetuities voids interests that may vest more than 21 years after a life in being.
- Joint tenancy requires unity of time, title, interest, and possession; severance destroys the right of survivorship. Tenancy by the entirety requires marriage.
Landlord-tenant and servitudes
- Leaseholds: term of years, periodic tenancy, tenancy at will, tenancy at sufferance. The covenant of quiet enjoyment supports constructive eviction.
- Easements may be express, implied, by necessity, or by prescription; they terminate by merger, release, abandonment, or prescription.
- Covenants and equitable servitudes require touch and concern, intent, and notice; equitable servitudes also require privity.
Adverse possession and recording
- Adverse possession requires actual, open, notorious, exclusive, continuous, and hostile possession for the statutory period.
- Recording acts: race, notice, and race-notice. The shelter rule protects a grantee who takes from a protected purchaser.
- Mortgages: lien theory versus title theory; foreclosure and statutory redemption.
Worked example
O conveys to A for life, then to A's heirs. A has a life estate; A's heirs have a vested remainder subject to open. The interest is valid because the remainder is vested and not subject to the Rule Against Perpetuities.
Traps
- Applying the Rule Against Perpetuities to vested remainders.
- Confusing an easement by necessity with an implied easement.
- Forgetting that recording protects subsequent purchasers, not trespassers.